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Time to take stock of your Personal Inventory

Couple On The River — Northern Rivers Coaching And Counselling In Rowlands Creek Road, Uki, NSW

One of the benefits of being stuck at home a little more these days is that we can actively take time to reflect. However there are a lot of forces - internal and external - which prevent us from allowing a bit of down time in our day. Mindfulness seems to be limited to a 20 minute app session if you are lucky, and then it is in to top gear of the "monkey mind" for most of the day, along with the usual distractions and anxieties.


Many of us are wondering right now what we will do about employment and generating income again. It's a scary thing. However there is an old saying "we can't control what happens much of the time, but we have total control about how we respond to what happens".


Perhaps before the restrictions and social distancing started, you were in a job you didn't really like. But because it paid the bills, you put it out of your mind and got on with it, not noticing that a little piece of your soul was being taken every day, and Mondays just felt like an impossible mountain of despair to climb. Perhaps you felt unwell or had unusual aches and pains leading into the work week.


It's quite likely these restrictions will go on for a few more months which might mean our credit gets squeezed and money becomes painfully tight. However banks, landlords, agencies of all shapes and sizes are trying to offer some relief for this. We will get through this tough time, but wouldn't it be sad if after all this time we went back to work and nothing changed? We hadn't refreshed our perspective, hadn't taken time out to reflect on what was working and not working in our lives, and used some strengths to set new goals and challenges for when life returned to normal?


If we can adopt an attitude that basically accepts:


1) We can't change what's happening

2) There are a few positives in all this

3) We have time to reflect on what's happening, who we really are, and what we like to do;


Then we have a real opportunity to set ourselves up for success with some clear goals, an exciting vision and the motivation to achieve what we set out to do.

Bird — Northern Rivers Coaching And Counselling In Rowlands Creek Road, Uki, NSW


Next week I will post a challenge for you called "The Personal Inventory". It's basically a template for coming up with a description of your ideal work environment, and a way of measuring your current role against your ideal work environment. The Personal Inventory helps you to consider different roles or career changes, and gives them a score out of 30 against the ideal work environment.


Now in 20 years I've never seen anyone score higher than 26/30. And that was very unusual. Here are a few measures for you to consider:


22/30 or better feels like you are jumping out of bed every morning, looking forward to going to work.


15/30 (plus or minus 1) is what I call "the stuck zone". You don't know if you want to leave or stay, if a recruiter called you up you might be interested. You're probably staying for the money and have disengaged from the role.


9/30 or worse is "Get me outta here!".


If you are keen, start to make a list of what's working or not working in your current role - and how you actually feel about that.


See you next week!


Cheers


Greg


Sunset — Northern Rivers Coaching And Counselling In Rowlands Creek Road, Uki, NSW
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